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GeezerVison is showing github.com — gh-154757: Unschedule removal of Py_UNICODE (and Py_UNICODE_TYPE) by encukou · Pull Request #160538 · python/cpython

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@encukou

@encukou encukou commented Oct 23, 2026 •
edited by bedevere-app Bot
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PEP-387 says (and did say back when these types were deprecated in 3.13):

If the expected maintenance overhead and security risk of the
deprecated behavior is small (e.g. an old function is
reimplemented in terms of a new, more general one),
it can stay indefinitely (or until the situation changes).

There's no need to remove two one-line typedefs.

  • Issue: 26 C APIs scheduled for removal in 3.16 are still present #154757

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@encukou
pythongh-154757: Unschedule removal of Py_UNICODE (and Py_UNICODE_TYPE)
0e59aed 
PEP-387 says (and did say back when these types were deprecated in 3.13):

> If the expected maintenance overhead and security risk of the
> deprecated behavior is small (e.g. an old function is
> reimplemented in terms of a new, more general one),
> it can stay indefinitely (or until the situation changes).

There's no need to remove these.
@encukou
encukou requested a review from vstinner October 23, 2026 22:52
@encukou
encukou requested review from AA-Turner and ZeroIntensity as code owners October 23, 2026 22:52
@bedevere-app bedevere-app Bot added awaiting core review type-feature A feature request or enhancement labels Oct 23, 2026
@bedevere-app bedevere-app Bot mentioned this pull request Oct 23, 2026
26 C APIs scheduled for removal in 3.16 are still present #154757
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@bedevere-app bedevere-app Bot added docs Documentation in the Doc dir skip news labels Oct 23, 2026
@github-project-automation github-project-automation Bot added this to Docs PRs Oct 23, 2026
@github-project-automation github-project-automation Bot moved this to Todo in Docs PRs Oct 23, 2026
@read-the-docs-community

read-the-docs-community Bot commented Oct 23, 2026

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Documentation build overview

📚 cpython-previews | 🛠️ Build #35367863 | 📁 Comparing 0e59aed against main (5ca490b)

  🔍 Preview build  

6 files changed · ± 6 modified

± Modified

  • c-api/unicode.html
  • deprecations/c-api-pending-removal-in-3.16.html
  • whatsnew/3.12.html
  • whatsnew/3.13.html
  • whatsnew/3.14.html
  • whatsnew/3.16.html
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vstinner
vstinner reviewed Oct 24, 2026
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Py_UNICODE and Py_UNICODE_TYPE are legacy of Python 3.2 which had this annoying "narrow vs wide" build. Python 3.3 and newer now uses Py_UCS4 which is 32-bit on all platforms. I don't think that we should keep them longer. It doesn't seem to be a big deal to remove these types: #154759 (comment).

If you want wchar_t, well, use wchar_t. Don't use Py_UNICODE or Py_UNICODE_TYPE.

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@encukou

encukou commented Oct 28, 2026

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Should we change the PEP, then?
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@vstinner vstinner mentioned this pull request Nov 4, 2026
gh-154757: Remove the deprecated Py_UNICODE type #154759
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@vstinner vstinner vstinner left review comments
@AA-Turner AA-Turner Awaiting requested review from AA-Turner AA-Turner is a code owner
@ZeroIntensity ZeroIntensity Awaiting requested review from ZeroIntensity ZeroIntensity is a code owner

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@encukou @vstinner
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